Incident Reporting

The following form can be used for Incidents and Accidents:

Incident:

An Incident is an event where personal injury, medical treatment or damage to property did not occur but were narrowly avoided. Reporting of incidents will assist CFT/IUC in determining any shortfall in training or member behaviour that can be modified to prevent future occurrences.

Accident:

An Accident is an event where there is personal injury or damage to any property.
The purpose of this procedure is to ensure that CFT/IUC, as a company, acts in a duly diligent way and protects its members adequately.

The CFT/IUC insurance is third party, legal indemnity insurance. This means that claims against individual members or clubs are covered where there is a legal liability as a result of proven negligence.

As CFT/IUC is the insured party, each member has an obligation to inform CFT/IUC as soon as practical of any event that might precipitate a claim of any sort. In the event that CFT/IUC has not been informed within seven days of the occurrence of such an event, all liability will rest on the members involved in the event.

Members are only insured for scuba activities after their records in Go Membership are fully completed for the current calendar year:
1. Subscription paid in full to CFT/IUC
2. Water Fitness Test successfully completed
3. Fitness to Dive process completed
4. Medical Assessment completed

Procedure

An accident or incident report must be sent in as soon as possible after the event. The report using Form 305 should be sent no later than seven days after the event . This form should be sent to the following email address: incidents@diving.ie or in hard copy to head office.

This email address redirects the email to CFT/IUC head office, the NDO and the Incidents Officer. The club DO and RDO should also be notified of the accident, however details included in the form can remain confidential.

Head Office will then notify the relevant parties and collate any necessary records. Head Office (via incidents@diving.ie ) is the first and only appropriate point of contact. All communication to any party regarding an accident, other than the Gardaí investigating the occurrence, will be carried out by CFT/IUC or the Insurers.

Incident Reporting

The sport of Scuba Diving involves immersion in an environment that traditionally does not support human life. We are also using bigger and faster boats and exploring parts of our coastline where few venture.

The risks in our sport are inherent and we must strive to make the standards safer for all. Incident reports have been recorded by CFT for many years and the lessons learnt from these incidents and accidents are important to CFT and of course to each and every member. It allows us to spot new risks in diving and boating and feed this information back into our courses, and “Rules and Recommendations”.

Our objectives with incident reporting are:

Learning from our mistakes

Sharing information

Identifying training needs

Identifying areas where equipment is likely to fail

With the publication of annual incident reports, members will have a greater awareness of these issues. It is the responsibility of each club’s Diving Officer to report an accident or an incident within the required time frame.

Accidents and Incidents do happen and very few divers can put their hand up and say they never had one.